We're all safer now: Austin teacher busted for .033 oz of pot

Reports Austin's KXAN-TV:

An Austin high school geography teacher has been arrested and charged with having marijuana and paraphernalia at his home, which is located within 1,000 feet of an elementary school.

Police had a search warrant for Ian Kristofer Grayson's single-family residence in the 6000 block of Leisure Run Road, located near Odom Elementary School.

Grayson, 34, has been a teacher at Austin High School since 2009, and from 2006 to 2009 he taught world history at International High School.

During the search, officers found .033 ounces of marijuana in two different glass containers and also in a trash container, which was empty except for the bag of pot and drug paraphernalia, according to Austin Police Department. Marijuana pipes, residue and other paraphernalia were found in various locations inside the home, including his bedroom, according to the arrest affidavit.

Since when does Austin PD seek search warrants for pot smokers? They'd have time to do nothing else if that were a common practice. It's worth mentioning they found less than a gram of pot, combined, scattered across three different locations in the house. Not exactly a kingpin, this fellow. Was this worth ruining the guy's life over - making him lose his job, trouncing him in the media? Who, if anyone, benefits?

One doubts Grayson's students would say they're better off for his arrest. One former student commented on the KXAN site, "I remember Ian Grayson from when I went to Austin High because he gave me a hug on my last day there." Another student declared, "Gotta love how they fire the best history teacher at our school because of something so stupid as possession. I guess an illegal plant takes more priority over a good education."

Whaddya think? Should police be executing search warrants in private homes for petty pot violations? Was AISD right to put the fellow on administrative leave or should he be reinstated?

Voters and the press should demand all Austin mayoral and city council candidates address this question as we approach city elections in May. Notably, in recent years Austin PD has placed increasingly greater emphasis on marijuana enforcement, with the number of new pot cases increasing 69% from 2007 to 2010. One wonders, for what purpose? Does that really reflect the priorities City Council expects APD to be focused on?

MORE (4/26).

County Judge, ex-DPS Sgt, consents to search revealing pot

Guadalupe County Judge Mike Wiggins (that's "county judge" as in chairman of the commissioners court, not a workaday jurist) was arrested in College Station for possessing less than 2 ounces of marijuana, discovered after he consented to a search of his bag by law enforcement during a "protective sweep" of his hotel room. Wiggins, who is ironically a former DPS sergeant, told the Seguin Gazette, "There's nothing I can deny. It is what it is."

Somebody notify the folks from Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, I think we've got another potential candidate for them.

Here are a coupla questions for the Peanut Gallery: What do you think would have happened if Judge Wiggins had refused to cooperate and declined consent to search his duffel bag? From the media description, does it sound like the officer had probable cause, or could Wiggins have successfully asserted his Fourth Amendment rights against an unreasonable search of his effects?

In the same vein, following the search, "According to the officer, Wiggins confirmed it was marijuana and admitted it was his." As a former DPS Sgt., we're talking about a man who understood his "right to remain silent." If Judge Wiggins had exercised it, would his glum mug shot still be plastered across the front page of the Seguin Gazette this morning?

Wiggins' term isn't up till 2014 and to my knowledge a Class B misdemeanor won't automatically disqualify him from office (any more than public officials must step down when they get a Class B DWI), so it will be interesting to watch how this plays out, how locals respond, and for that matter how well (or poorly) the media handle the whole episode. "It is what it is," Wiggins told the paper, but in this day and age, what is it? Support for marijuana legalization in America stands at record highs. Is this a big deal? A little deal? No deal? Will voters view Wiggins as hypocrite or hero? Must he grovel and apologize, or is "it is what it is" enough? Bottom line: Is this a career killer for a workaday 21st century politico, or something voters can forgive? What do you think?

MORE: From the SA Express-News.

Which devil do you want to dance with? Do conservatives prefer pot or national health care?

This cracks me up: Mother Jones reports that the central arguments which will be considered by the US Supreme Court in favor of "Obamacare" hinge on the high court's past judicial finagling to justify federal regulation of medical marijuana. Wrote Stephanie Menciner:

In both the DC Circuit and the 6th Circuit, the two appellate courts that have upheld the health care law, judges relied heavily on a 2005 Supreme Court ruling in Gonzalez v. Raich—a medical marijuana case. That case involved a California woman named Diane Monson who'd been growing marijuana in her backyard for medicinal reasons. (Monson was joined in the case by Angel Raich, a woman who'd also had her medicinal marijuana seized by federal agents.) The DEA swooped in one day and destroyed her plants, even though medical marijuana use in California is legal under state law. The high court found that the Commerce Clause gave Congress wide authority to regulate interstate commerce, even when that commerce takes place mostly in someone's backyard.

Monson had claimed the DEA's action was unconstitutional and a violation of the Commerce Clause because federal agents were moving to prohibit noncommercial, intrastate cultivation of a plant intended for personal consumption. The pot wasn't crossing state lines—it wasn't even being sold at all. That, the plaintiffs believed, made the weed beyond the reach of the feds.

The Supreme Court would have none of it. In a 6 to 3 decision, the court held that Congress could regulate backyard pot cultivation because it still constituted part of a very large, interstate market. It’s hard to see how the individual mandate doesn't square with that view of the law, given how enormous the national health care market is. Sixth Circuit Judge Jeffery Sutton, a George W. Bush nominee and a former clerk for Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, wrote, "If Congress could regulate Angel Raich when she grew marijuana on her property for self-consumption, it is difficult to say Congress may not regulate the 50 million Americans who self-finance their medical care."

How's that for unintended consequences? If the US Supreme Court upholds the "individual mandate" in Obamacare, the Tea Party types will mainly have overreach by Big Government drug warriors to blame. The prevailing narrative has it that states rights were radically scaled back first by the Civil War, then Reconstruction and later the destruction of Jim Crow, all of which is true. But less frequently discussed is how, after that, the remnants of states rights were all but annihilated over the ensuing four decades in the name of the drug war, which is why they now are nonexistent when the same mechanisms used to justify the drug war are trotted out to impose national healthcare.

If movement conservatives had to choose, I wonder, would they prefer to end Obamacare but allow Californians to grow pot in their back yards, or would the urgent necessity to regulate medical marijuana justify living with federalized healthcare and mandatory coverage? Which devil do you want to dance with? Like many constitutional liberties, states rights, or its abrogation, is a two-edged sword.